June 17th World Cup Games

Portugal defeated Iran 2 – 0, eliminating any hopes Iran had of moving forward to the second round. They have one more game to play, but no hope of moving on.

In an amazing upset, Ghana defeated the Czech Republic 2 – 0. This is the first ever World Cup match victory for an African country. You wouldn’t know it from the commentators on ABC here in the United States, they only seemed to care how it affected the USA’s chances of moving forward to the second round. (See my seperate blog for more on this)

Then came the USA Vs. Italy game. Can we just go ahead and say it was the worst officiated game ever? Fouls that barely warrented a yellow card earned red cards. By the end of the game the USA had lost two players to red cards and Italy had lost one, so instead of 11-on-11 players, it ended up being 10-on-9. Other fouls that needed only a verbal warning got yellow carded. It was a total disaster. The final score was 1 – 1, and the USA goal was scored off an Italian player. It was a very, very odd game. USA stays in for now though.